


The War Ain't Over, Little Toy Soldier

by j_marquis



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Modern: Still Have Powers, Dimilix Big Bang (Fire Emblem), M/M, PostWar, minor sylvain/ingrid, news articles and texts, no alliance mentioned, politics of faerghus, rodrigue still dies, they are there just not relevant to the story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:15:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 12,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26984269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_marquis/pseuds/j_marquis
Summary: "Thank you for coming this afternoon. I come to you with tragic news. As you know, for some time, Duke Rodrigue Fraldarius has been serving as King Regent as I prepare to take the crown of peacetime. He has been a friend, an invaluable asset, a true leader, and has shown me what it means to be a king. And more than that, he has been a father to me. But Rodrigue has fallen ill. And I have been informed it does not seem he has long to live. He is being well cared for, kept very comfortable in the Saint Cethleann hospital here in Fhirdiad. We are doing everything we can to make sure that he does not suffer in his illness."Dimitri steels himself, his expression a mess of turmoil."I come to you not only with this update, but with a request. Five years ago, following the death of Glenn Fraldarius, Rodrigue’s older son, his younger son Felix also left home. We kept it quiet as much as possible, but I come to you now with a plea. Not as your prince, but as a man. A man losing someone he loves. Felix, please. Come home. Your father needs you. We need you."
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19
Collections: Dimilix Big Bang





	1. The War Ain't Over Little Toy Soldier

**Author's Note:**

> For the Dimilix Big Bang on Twitter!
> 
> Title is from "Toy Soldier" by The Menzingers, which is my Dimitri anthem.

The war was over. They kept telling him the war was over, everyone said the war was over. It’s over. No more fighting. No more soldiers in the streets or crumbled buildings, no more starvation in the dark corners where the leaders pretended not to look.

The war wasn’t over. Felix saw the abandoned buildings, empty streets. The orphans playing in the fountains trying to be happy. Shuttered windows and averted glances. Maybe there weren’t any more bombs, maybe the soldiers were gone from the streets of Enbarr, but the war raged on. He’d made this place his home, five years, and to see it so hollow was a war of itself. It was more of a home than the last one had been, anyways.

The television mounted on the wall behind the bar played the news. Felix resolutely ignored it, let the small bartender pour his beer and ignored her too. He didn’t want to hear about the peace talks, didn’t want to hear about the state meetings, the parades, the relief efforts slapped together to try to make something better about all of this.

Felix didn’t want to see him.

Five years and the feeling didn’t go away. He wanted to scream, rip down the television, start the war all over again so he never had to see the beast who wore his face. But he just groaned, hung his head. Picked at the threadbare torn jeans he wore, working the hole further apart in his anxiety.

“Felix.”

Dorothea sat beside him, ordered her own drink. Something strong and fruity, the same color as her bright red nails. It didn’t matter to Dorothea that it was only noon, she started drinking whenever the urge struck her, and she had the tolerance to deal with it.

“They said there’s going to be an address from the Crown Prince of Faerghus today, you should be avoiding the television.”

Felix rolled his eyes. “He never shows his face on the tv.”

“Yeah, that’s why even I know about it. Shit never happens.”

Felix managed a heavy sigh, finished his beer. “I’m going.”

“Where?”

“I’m guessing the old theater is off limits?”

“For now.” Dorothea agreed. “A lot of the soldiers are still hanging around there. Probably best you keep your distance. Getting recognized and all that.”

Felix rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to get recognized by some nameless idiot soldiers squatting in your theater.”

“No. But some big names have been showing up. Von Aegir, the presumptive prime minister, he’s been hanging around. And the Emperor’s weird shadow assassin whatever his name is, he’s been helping too. One of them might know your face.”

It was all Felix could do not to launch the empty beer mug at the television. “Fine. I’ll find somewhere else to lay low.”

“I’m sorry.” Dorothea bought him a second round.

_**Begin Broadcast** _

_ANNOUNCER: Since peace talks were finalized last year, the Crown Prince Dimitri Alexandre Bladddyd has not been publicly seen. Sources say he has been keeping a low profile due to injuries suffered during the war. Others speculate the sudden announcement of a public appearance is to demonstrate strength despite the many acquiesces made in peace talks._

_The scene shifts to previously recorded footage from peace announcements. DIMITRI, tall, in military finery, a black leather patch covering one eye, stands on one side of a long table. His finery is primarily blue, in stark contrast to that of EDELGARD, in brilliant reds, her military regalia comes from a different country, her emblem an eagle, opposed to DIMITRI’S lion. The same lion that adorns a tattoo leaping down RODRIGUE’S arm. He looks almost exactly like FELIX, only older. World weary and worn._

_ANNOUNCER: During the peace talks Crown Prince Dimitri was never seen without his King Regent, Rodrigue Fraldarius. Rodrigue was a hero during the second war of Eagle and Lion, and while no country has formally claimed victory in the war, Faerghus was forced to hand over a good deal of territory to the New Democratic Adrestian Empire. With their former military might decimated, our political commentator, Professor Hanneman von Essar, had this to say:_

_The television screen shifts to HANNEMAN. He’s an older man, dignified but smiling._

_HANNEMAN: Faerghus suffered incredible losses in the five years of the second war. And while they may have retained their independence, ceding of the border territories indicates a loss, and the disappearance of Crown Prince Dimitri only compounds the idea that while the Adrestian Empress has declined to declare victory, the implication is clear. Faerghus lost the war, and they know it. We can only hope that Crown Prince Dimitri’s public appearance will be to concede that fact._

_**End broadcast.** _


	2. The Calm before the Storm

“You don’t have to stay and watch.” Dorothea told him.

“No. I don’t.” Felix bit out, glaring down at the stained bartop. He knew he was going to stay. He was going to watch. He was going to stare down that stupid monster who wore his face and he was going to watch him speak, that beautiful, false voice, none of it showed his Dimitri. It looked like his, talked like his, the same poise and posture they tried to drill into them both when they were children. But it wasn’t him.

He’d lost Dimitri to the war. No, earlier than that. When Dimitri brought Glenn’s sword home from Duscur. That was when the nightmares had started, when Dimitri began to speak to dark empty corners and people stopped seeing Felix.

“You look so much like your brother.”

“You must miss Glenn so much.”

“Your brother was a hero, you know.”

“Glenn would have been so proud.”

“So young, it’s not right.”

“A hero.”

“A true knight.”

“He was-”

“Glenn-”

“Your brother-”

Felix didn’t exist anymore. He was a shadow. He lost his name, became Glenn’s little brother. Clutched the sword Dimitri brought home, slept in Glenn’s bed, wrapped up in his cloak. 

And then there was the night Dimitri came to lay beside him.

They often slept beside each other when they were children, tangled up, peas in a pod, they used to call the prince and the younger Fraldarius boy. So it wasn’t unusual when Dimitri came to Glenn’s room, laid down beside Felix and reached for his hand. It wasn’t until the middle of the night that Felix realized Dimitri didn’t see him either.

Dimitri called him Glenn too.

And so it was easy to go to the battlefield, where they all called him by a title. He didn’t need a name. He didn’t have a name. He didn’t have to be anyone at all. He could close off and just be the perfect little soldier they had always wanted him to be. The battlefield was simple. He was nothing but an extension of his weapons, of swords and magic, the way it coursed in his arms, he didn’t have to think about who he was. What he was. Fighting was easy. And killing was nothing if you were no one, because the enemy was just a faceless mass.

But even he didn’t kill with the bloodlust that overtook the Boar Prince. With Felix, death was hollow. He was no one, the enemy didn’t even register as human. But Dimitri killed with glee. He was happy to do it, he gifted his kills to his father, to Glenn. Promised he was avenging them with this bloodshed. It bathed his face, his armor, the sacred lance that marked him as the last surviving royalty. He killed with his bare hands.

He enjoyed it.

Felix couldn’t serve a king who loved death.

And he couldn’t save someone who looked at him, who didn’t see him. Who offered him an eviscerated corpse. “It’s for you, Glenn. I’ll avenge you.”

Felix left that night. He told Dimitri he had nothing to stay for, and in a moment of clarity, Dimitri begged him to stay.

But when Felix closed his eyes he knew it was just the beast, the wild boar. Maybe Dimitri could see him, rare flights of clarity, but he was the beast who had ripped out a man’s throat and given the kill to his dead father.

_**Begin broadcast** _

_DIMITRI ALEXANDRE BLAIDDYD takes the stage. He is tall, in military finery, a black eyepatch across his left eye socket. He wears a small golden circlet in place of a formal crown, indicating his status as the Crown Prince of Faerghus. He stands on a temporary stage, in front of a throng of reporters and photographers. To the side stand INGRID BRANDL GALATEA and SYLVAIN JOSE GAUTIER, soldiers, advisors and bodyguards to the Crown Prince._

_DIMITRI: Thank you for coming this afternoon. I come to you with tragic news. As you know, for some time, Duke Rodrigue Fraldarius has been serving as King Regent as I prepare to take the crown of peacetime. He has been a friend, an invaluable asset, a true leader, and has shown me what it means to be a king. And more than that, he has been a father to me. But Rodrigue has fallen ill. And I have been informed it does not seem he has long to live. He is being well cared for, kept very comfortable in the Saint Cethleann hospital here in Fhirdiad. We are doing everything we can to make sure that he does not suffer in his illness._

_Dimitri steels himself, his expression a mess of turmoil._

_DIMITRI, CONT: I come to you not only with this update, but with a request. Five years ago, following the death of Glenn Fraldarius, Rodrigue’s older son, his younger son Felix also left home. We kept it quiet as much as possible, but I come to you now with a plea. Not as your prince, but as a man. A man losing someone he loves. Felix, please. Come home. Your father needs you. We need you._

_**End broadcast** _


	3. You Want to Raise Hell with your Dead Friends

Dorothea touched his shoulder. Said nothing. Nothing, even as he walked back towards the old opera house where they had been staying. Nothing, when his hands shook almost too much to light a cigarette. He didn’t smoke anymore, kept telling himself. Only when it hurt.

It hurt. Every injury he had suffered as a soldier hurt. Every lightning scar from the magic he had practiced hurt. Every scar of his training hurt. The smoke pouring into his lungs hurt. The scar on the palm of his hand (Blood brothers? Dimitri had asked. Blood brothers. Felix had promised.) hurt. But Dorothea was good. Dorothea said nothing. She touched his hand, and when he was ready, she wrapped him up in her arms.

“Are you going?”

“I have to.”

“You don’t. No one will think any less of you if you stay here.”

“Doro-”

“You are your own person, Felix. You aren’t beholden to them.” She took his hands, made sure he saw her eyes. He hated meeting people’s eyes. He hated what he saw there, and he didn’t want to know what they saw in his.

Most people only saw his brother anyway.

But Dorothea was different. She had always been different. She had never known Glenn. She had never lived in palaces, never known the expectations that people placed when you had a titled name. She found him when he arrived in Enbarr, when he was squatting in a bombed out theater. She found him, helped him get secondhand clothes, helped him find a new name to give if people demanded. Put him in touch with people who forged papers.

And she listened, with no expectations.

He was more beholden to her, than he was to anyone who called themselves family. She had given him a life, the kind of life he wanted. The kind of life he chose for himself. Where he didn’t have to be anyone.

“I don’t think I could live with myself if I didn’t see him once more.”

“Then I’ll help you get there.” Dorothea took him into her arms, rubbed his back. “When you’re ready.”

\-----

He had almost managed to forget the war when he stayed with Dorothea. Stuck to the cities, stuck to small movements and bitter drinks, parties and live music. Careless, he could forget who he was. Give fake names, I’m Leon, I’m Kyphon, I’m no one important. 

_I wasn’t in the war._

Sixteen was the age of enlistment in Faerghus and as the son of the Duke Fraldarius Felix was expected to enlist. With his dead hero brother Felix was expected to enlist. His skill with a blade, with a sniper rifle, his calm composure was all but notorious in the military academy. Not to mention his social circle, including the future king, whose side he never left. Felix was expected to enlist.

And he did.

At first he was not given a command, he was too young. Technically, he had fudged his enlistment papers, had not turned sixteen until he had already been enlisted a full week. Didn’t tell them about the nightmares, the mornings he would take up and everyone would see Glenn, they wouldn’t see him and when he looked in the mirror he saw Glenn too, dripping with blood and pride. The golden child they all wanted to see. He didn’t tell them he still wanted to get up in the middle of the night, crawl into bed beside Dimitri and seek comfort.

He passed his initiation with flying colors.

And there was a war on. And they needed all the warm bodies they could to stand off against the encroaching Adrestian armies.

And so Felix Fraldarius went to war.

And at first it was the trenches, just another face in his uniform, clutching his weapon to him, though they wanted him for his skill with magic. For the lightning he could rain down across the battlefield. He didn’t have to come close. Didn’t have to see their faces as the agony tore across them, as they broke apart.

In the trenches, in the dark, when the only light was magic and explosions, roughly hung lanterns barely reflecting enough light to see the shaken faces of his fellow soldiers, the blood and the shit and the viscera and the dying and the dead, Felix didn’t sleep. He couldn’t sleep. The explosions and the magic and the screams and wails of the dead and dying. He wondered, idly, sitting in the mud and hoping it wasn’t something worse, if Glenn had been so broken up when he died. If he had lost his control, like the soldier hurriedly, panicky, trying to shove his entrails back into the open chasm of his gut. If he had been a mess of bodily fluids, like the mess that had become the floor beneath his boots.

Or perhaps he had just been a hero. Like they called Dimitri. Called him a hero, called him their savior, spoke in hushed whispers of their Lion Prince. They called him a hero, called him a warrior, called him a worthy ruler. He would be a good king, they whispered, but their voices shook. They both feared and revered him, the way they spoke Felix couldn’t be sure the being they so worshipped was even human.

He didn’t like what he heard. Didn’t like the idea of what Dimitri could become. He was already leading a battalion, they were coming to the trenches where Felix had been stationed. And the rumors spread wide through the tunnels, of who Prince Dimitri was. How he cut through the Adrestian soldiers with hardly a glance, hardly a flinch, even as everyone else took their first lives, remembered every single face.

Felix remembered every single face he saw. That was why he preferred the magic, far away enough he didn’t have to see their faces. The gut wrenching screams and the way they shit themselves when their bodies gave out.

No one ever bothered, in all his time in military academies and mock battles and trainings, to tell him just how bad a war smelled.

Dimitri arrived four days later, with his shining battalion of perfect soldiers, in his fineries and his regalia, and they bowed for him and for the first time Felix saw the monster that lived inside him. There was nothing but blood behind those eyes. Rage and hatred and emptiness.

He watched Dimitri take to the battlefield, bullets thrashing into his black armor, pierced nothing, watched him pull the visor of his helmet down and he thrust Areadbhar into soldier after soldier after soldier, ripping them apart, staining his dark armor until it matted over rust-colored with blood.

There were ghosts in his eyes and he didn’t speak. But they worshipped him and he played at human when the battle had faded to distant gunfire and the mages holding the line. Dimitri smiled and he spoke to the generals and even the soldiers and he comforted the dead and the dying and they looked at him like a god.

Felix left that night.

\-----


	4. Burn the Candle at Both Ends

And now he was going back. Dorothea saw him off as he climbed into the storage car of a freight train, clasped his hand. 

“Come back soon, okay. You don’t have to stay, no one can make you stay.”

“I’ll come back, we can rent a place. Find somewhere to actually live.”

“You can write me songs. I’ll be the biggest pop star the world has ever seen.”

“We’ll see.”

Dorothea watched him go. He watched as her figure turned into smoke behind him, curled up, knees to his chest. He’d rode trains like this for months when he ran, going anywhere at all. He wanted to go nowhere, be no one. And he’d become no one.

And maybe he had started to reinvent himself, playing the beat up guitar sitting on the stage of the old opera house, abandoned from the war. Sleeping in the rafters. Drinking moonshine distilled in the dark corridors underneath the stage. Dorothea waltzed around in the dusty costumes, singing the songs she had known in her heyday as a performer, only a few years ago. Sometimes others came and went, a shy girl with a shock of purple hair, a short, wild man who had been discharged from the Adrestian army because of injuries, and his tired, sarcastic boyfriend. A tall woman from Brigid, her accent thick, she couldn’t get out of the country because of the fighting, or maybe because of the way she looked at Dorothea. 

He rode the rail line as far as he could. Past the disputed territory, past the lands Faerghus had been forced to relinquish. The trenches were still dug, the barbed wire fencing, the desolation of the land. Scorch marks and lightning scars from the mages. The blasts of grenades where nothing could grow again. He sunk down into the trench, stepped over bones. He could see Dimitri’s empty eyes. 

He could see the monster, impaling soldiers on his spear.

Soldiers like the short, loud boy Dorothea had been friends with, he spoke of the wild beast of Faerghus, the man who claimed rule, he terrified the soldiers. They thought him a demon, a monster, crazed and feral, coated in blood. Someone had taken his eye, the boy had said, and he razed the battlefield with his eye hanging by one tendril, blood coating the trenches.

Felix made his way over the bones, through the trenches he knew like the veins in his arms. Swirling and spiraling tunnels cutting through the battlefield. They would lead into a town in the Tailtean Plains. He was almost certain the town had been destroyed. Nothing could survive anymore. Not even Rodrigue fucking Fraldarius.

He knew the trenches would be empty, he knew the way they cut across the plains, knew the telltale signs where bombs had been planted, the ways to avoid them. And in some ways it was like coming home. The air was colder in Faerghus, his clothes too thin and his breath puffed visible the closer he got. He wished he had bummed one of Dorothea’s cigarettes, only for the warmth.

He stole a military jacket from a corpse. It had someone else’s name on it. Didn’t recognize the name. It didn’t matter. It was warm, and the dead didn’t feel the frost. And besides, he could catch another train once he found the town.

He had to jump while it was still moving, they wouldn’t stop in a ruined town, no one to pick up or drop off in burned out buildings, no ghosts to invite onto the passenger cars. He waited for the train to pass by, and jumped, landed on top of what he hoped was a storage car, hoped there was no one to notice. Hoped this was the right rail, to take him straight into Fhirdiad.

He’d burned his old ID cards with the soldier’s clothes that had belonged to someone he wasn’t anymore. But he still had the lion tattooed down his arm, the same his father had, the same Glenn had. They were the right hands of the kings of Faerghus, their arms belonged to the lion. He would be known, if he were found.

So he couldn’t be found.

Felix had always been fast, it was where his power came from. He was fast, and he was strong. While he couldn’t compete with Dimitri in brute strength, he could dance circles around him in the training field. So it was simple enough to avoid the few people who kept watch on the storage cars in the train he had hopped. Found a corner, wrapped up in the stolen jacket ( _Rowe,_ it said. Any relation to the Count?) and slept until Fhirdiad.

Fortunately for him, old military garb and torn clothes didn’t stand out in the Capital city. His arms were hidden, no one could see the lion tattoo that bound him to Dimitri, to his house and his title and the things he tried to leave behind. His tired eyes and slender frame were easily overlooked, and he hoped it was enough to get him through this one last thing he had to do.

Just one more thing before he could leave Faerghus behind forever.


	5. Say Goodbye to your Dead Friends

He hated hospitals. Had always hated hospitals. The sterile antiseptic smell, constant beeping, the high whine of the fluorescent lights. But at least here he was faceless, he blended in with the visitors and mourners in the halls. Still so full, even two full years after the war. People still suffered. Or maybe it was just the large group in the waiting room, paying tribute to Rodrigue Fraldarius. Felix didn’t want to pay tribute. But nor did he want to go to the front desk, hand over his name and risk being known. Risk Dimitri, anyone, seeing him. Risk seeing Dimitri again.

He didn’t know what he would do if the Crown Prince showed up.

He’d imagined it. All the way on the train, hiding his face, he’d imagined what he would say. The insults he would hurl, the spite and malice that would leave his lips. Anger, rage, he hatred he would let out, all five years of pent up anger. Not at Dimitri. At this beast that had taken him over, the creature, the wild boar that wore Dimitri’s face, that thing that had destroyed his best friend. He couldn’t believe that thing was really the crown prince. If he believed the beast was as real as Dimitri, there was no hope.

It was harder to get to Rodrigue. He was well guarded, the floor he was on blocked to all but the tightest security regimen. Anyone entering was tightly screened. Of course they were, this was the man who had been the acting king for years, the hero of the great war, still despised by many who had lost so much to those long years. Still despised by his living son. But his failures would be forgotten in death, he would be revered as a hero.

Sickening.

Felix didn’t give them his real name. He knew the names of soldiers, he knew the ranks and the numbers that would make them think he was a member of Fraldarius’ battalion. A soldier, paying respects.

“He’s not awake much anymore, though, sir.” The nurse sounded apologetic.

It was hard to bite back the _good_ that welled up in his throat. She wasn’t allowed to know. It would say too much. And he didn’t want anyone to know. Didn’t want them to find him. Or worse, call Dimitri, or Sylvain or Ingrid. Any of the Golden Four, as the tabloids and news stories had called them.

_**The Golden Four: Faerghus’ New Generation of Leaders** _

_Inside the lives of the Crown Prince Dimitri and his companions_

_Ingrid Galatea doesn’t mind being the only girl in the pictures. Since her childhood romance with Sir Glenn Fraldarius, Ingrid has been found alongside the Crown Prince Dimitri, Glenn’s younger brother Felix Hugo Fraldarius, and Faerghus’ favorite wild child, Sylvain Gautier. And even before the engagement, which was tragically cut short by Glenn’s death in the Duscur tragedy that took the lives of 165 soldiers, including Ingrid’s betrothed, as well as King Lambert Blaiddyd. But even through the ensuing tensions, the Golden Four of Faerghus can be found together._

_Lady Ingrid joins us in a picturesque cafe in Fhirdiad, perfectly manicured nails wrapped around a cappuccino that she decorates with cocoa powder. She isn’t made up, dressed simply in a white sweater and jeans, high riding boots, but she still is a picture of elegance and noble graces.She has agreed to tell us about her longtime companions, a rare look behind the walls of the castle._

_“I think people tend to forget that I went through the same combat training as the rest of them. I’m a pegasus knight, but people want to talk about my marriage prospects or what I wear. I don’t even know what I’m wearing, past, you know, it’s comfortable and I like it.” Ingrid tells us, when we ask her to tell us about herself._

_“I’d rather be in the stables than at parties or dances or shopping,” Ingrid continues, with a loose smile. “And that was, well, that was what Glenn and I bonded over. We used to joke about running off to the mountains and raising horses and sheep and giving up our titles.”_

_Well wouldn’t that have been a scandal?_

_“Felix isn’t anything like his brother, though.” She goes on, when prompted. “He, I mean, I love him, he’s like a brother to me, but he’s that wild brother you feel like you need to protect. He can play guitar, though, you know that? He used to be very musical. It was cute. When we’d all hang out he’d be making up songs. He changed. And I can’t really blame him. I thought we’d be closer after all of this, but he’s still attached at the hip to Dima. Just like always."_

_Dima, we find out, is what they call Crown Prince Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd. The Golden Four have known each other since infancy, they all have nicknames for each other. But the only one we manage to get from Ingrid is Prince Dimitri’s, and even then she claims it was an accident. Despite our attempts, she will not tell us what she calls Felix or Sylvain._

_“Dimitri adores Felix, though. No matter how much an asshole Felix is being he just smiles. He used to love when Felix would make up his songs, he’ll put up with anything. He’s going to be a great king, he understands people. But sometimes, you know, a little too much? Like something’s going to hurt someone and he’s just going to break. I guess that’s why we’re all still here. We have to look after him.”_

_She gets distracted telling us a long, meandering story about trying to teach Crown Prince Dimitri to ride a horse, all the teasing they did as he tried to soothe a skittish animal. It’s cute, but she asks us not to print her words, as there is a certain “Image to maintain.”_

_And then there’s Sylvain Jose Gautier. “If he would stop bringing girls back to the palace that would be nice,” Ingrid laughs. “But it’s okay, that’s just how he is, right? He likes having girls around. I think it makes him feel wanted. He had some, you know, you guys did really good coverage of all the troubles with Miklan. So you know. I think Sylvain needs to feel like people want him around.”_

_She flushes, red against her pale skin. “But I think I’m saying more than I should. I don’t get to talk about my boys too much.” She gets up, brushes the flakes of the croissant she picked apart and ate while we talked off of her jeans. “At least print how much I love them dearly?”_

_And she clearly does. Enough to have nicknames for them all._


	6. One Day you'll see them all Again

Rodrigue was unconscious when Felix finally managed to sneak into the hospital room without giving away his name. A sigh of relief, Felix wasn’t sure he was going to be able to look Rodrigue Fraldarius in the eye. Couldn’t return after five years and face the man who told him his brother’s death was good. That he was proud of someone who would throw away his life for an untenable monarchy. For some kind of honor that hadn’t existed since the time of Loog. 

Some kind of knightly ideal. This death, what Rodrigue suffered, unconscious, hooked to machines that forced him to breathe, forced his heart to keep beating, fed medications and nutritions into his protruding veins, this wasn’t noble. It wasn’t knightly. This wasn’t a battlefield and there was no king to die for.

Felix thought it was a battle as hard as any man had ever fought, but there would be no convincing anyone in Faerghus of that. Soldiers were meant to die in wars, for their kings and country and families and ways of life, not tiny and pale in a sickbed. Rodrigue would demand to be taken off of these machines, if he was awake, he would insist he was well and keep serving. King in all but name, so Dimitri didn’t have to dirty his hands.

Or so Dimitri could go out into the battlefield with all the bloodlust the boar had kept barely hidden under the surface.

There was nothing to say. Nothing to be said. Nothing but rage that built up in Felix’s throat. He called it rage, this burning behind his eyes, in his throat that threatened to spill over.

Crybaby, they used to call him, teasing when Felix ran, tears streaming down his cheeks, to Glenn or DImitri or anyone who would give him comfort. When he ran until his country, his king was far behind him they called him a coward, a deserter. And that was all he could ever be. Because to do otherwise would mean showing his face to that boar that pretended to be the Crown Prince.

Coward. Crybaby. Deserter.

He didn’t even leave a note, wiped the red-hot tears from his eyes.

Coward.

He turned away from the dying man in the hospital bed.

Crybaby.

The tears kept streaming down his cheeks, he wiped them again, angry no longer with Rodrigue, or with Dimitri, or with Faerghus and these stupid insipid pointless ideals that killed everyone he loved. Angry with himself, for coming back.’

Deserter.

His breath trembled, he scratched at the lion tattoo that decorated his right arm, the symbol that proved he could never leave home. A winding, decorative thing, in vibrant blues and golds and dark that couldn’t be mistaken for anything but a Faerghus lion. His pride and his shame and his love and hate all boiled into one lingering mark.

Coward. Crybaby. Deserter.

“Felix?”

He walked faster. It couldn’t be. It was his mind playing tricks on him, the one thing he didn’t want to see, the one person he couldn’t ever face again.

“Felix?”

If he kept going Dimitri couldn’t stop him. He wouldn’t dare. He wouldn’t make a scene in a hospital hallway. If he didn’t look up maybe Dimitri could think he had been mistaken. That it wasn’t Felix, head down, wiping his eyes, shoulders shaking, too skinny in his old shirt and torn jeans. Maybe it was a different dark haired twig of a man with a lion on his arm bearing his shame. There had to be other soldiers with lightning magic scars on their pale arms.

“Felix stop.”

“I have nothing to stay for.”

_“I have nothing to stay for.”_

_“Then stay for me.” Dimitri clutched his hand. “Stay because I cannot do this alone.”_

_The war raged outside the makeshift tent, the explosions and the death and the screams for mercy. Dimitri didn't even flinch. His clothes were covered in blood and dirt. No one could be regal, no one could be noble in war, but this filthy exterior didn't reach his eyes. They were hollow and it made Felix want to retch. He steeled himself, and forced himself to meet those empty blue eyes._

_“You have so many better suited for this than me.” Felix wrenched his hand away. Turned his back. So Dimitri couldn’t see him cry. “I can’t be witness to your self destruction.”_

“Did you see him?”

“He’s not going to wake up.”

“He was asking for you.”

“He doesn’t want me.”

“He wants his son nearby.” Dimitri pleaded.

“We can’t have this conversation here. People will know.”

Dimitri sent the guards, the nurses away. No one dared speak against the Crown Prince. They left with barely a glance. Rumors would spread later, of course they would, the guard might keep their mouths shut but the nurses wouldn’t. And they had heard his name. Heard Dimitri call him Felix, and heard him talk back to the prince. He’d been found. Against everything he had tried, had wanted, he’d been found. And Dimitri was touching his hand.

“You heard me.”

“You broadcast all over the fucking world. Of course I heard.”

“He was asking for you. Every time he woke up he wanted to know where you were.”

“To make me promise to do my duty I’m sure. I’m needed for the king, a Fraldarius has always been at the right hand of the king.” He scrubbed his hands over his face, remembering once again why he had left. Anger replaced anguish. “I came. I saw him. Now let me go.”

“Please stay.”

“Why? So I can fulfill the duty that’s been fostered on me purely for my birth?”

“Your father is dying, Felix. Maybe you can stay just until we’ve laid him to rest?” Dimitri pushed. The hand that had so gently touched his, like Dimitri wasn’t sure he was real, turned into a cold grip on his wrist.

He didn’t have a choice. Dimitri could, would make him stay. That beast that wore his skin wanted to force Felix to face everything he had run away from.

“Just until the funeral. Then I’m gone.” He wrenched his hand loose from Dimitri’s grip.


	7. If We Walk Away They'll Walk Away

Dimitri used the back passages and the service elevators to get out of the hospital, and he just expected Felix to follow. Of course he followed. He’d always followed, always at Dimitri’s heels, always reaching for him, following him, chasing, just one step behind.

At least no one saw him.

No one, save for Dedue, the near silent Duscur man who had followed Dimitri back from the massacre and declared he would help. Had become more than a servant, more than a retainer to the Crown Prince, more of a loyal dog than Felix had ever been. He’d been a loyal pet, once, following Dimitri, but Dedue showed a loyalty that made Felix sick.

“The young Fraldarius has come home.” Dedue smiled, a faint, flickering thing.

“No one is to know.” Dimitri’s voice held no room for argument.

“Unless I decide I want them to.” Felix challenged.

“Of course. It’s your decision.” Dimitri looked away. He wasn’t happy with it. And Felix didn’t ask, didn’t want to know why the beast would want to keep Felix hidden. What he might have planned.

“He missed you.”

Felix didn’t respond.

“We all missed you.”

Still, he couldn’t speak. Wouldn’t. Wouldn’t talk about how he had missed them, the cold nights before he had found a few scarce friends. Alone to cross borders, to reinvent himself, freezing and scared. He couldn’t speak.

“We looked for you. But the war- It made things harder.”

“That was something of the point.”

Dimitri ignored Felix’s glares, his coldness. His attempts to push him away. “Where did you go?”

“What, so you can follow me when I leave again?”

“That’s not it.”

Felix stared determinedly out the tinted window of the town car. Watched the city he had once known go by, barely changed in five long years. The palace, that would never change. Reporters tried to get near the car, tried to ask questions through the tinted windows, tried to see inside. Felix shied away. He had been scared of the attention as a child, was scared of it now. Dimitri reached out to reassure him.

Felix pushed him away. And as soon as the car was inside the palace garage, the one connected to the living areas, far away from prying eyes, Felix stormed away. He still knew these halls. He knew how to get to the bedrooms they had slept in as children. He thought he might still know how to avoid the staff and get somewhere he could be alone.

Glenn’s room still had a lock on the door. He locked himself inside, sunk against the door, burrowed against himself. And there, there was Glenn’s cloak, where it had been hung on the back of the wardrobe, warm and reassuring, like at any moment his dear darling dead big brother would walk through the door, laughing, or playing a game on his phone, or still talking to Ingrid. He’d pick Felix up and throw him on the bed, laughing, asking him what he was doing hiding in his room. Felix tugged his knees to his chest, buried his face.

He could stay here, Felix told himself. Stay here in this room until it was all over and go back. Back to Enbarr and Dorothea and the beat up acoustic guitar she had found for him. Cheap beer and busking on the streets. Peace.

Or he could stay. Accept the title of Duke Fraldarius, stay with Dimitri. Reconnect with Sylvain and Ingrid. Pretend the world was as it should be and rebuild Faerghus. And maybe, just maybe, just maybe Dimitri would see him. Really see him, the way he used to. Fulfill the duty that had been pushed on him for far too long. Everything he had run away from.

But here, on the floor of Glenn’s old room, knees tugged to his chest and the all too familiar tears in his eyes, the past took a rosy glow. He remembered play wrestling with Glenn. Learning to ride horseback alongside Ingrid and Sylvain and Dimitri. The summer palace beside the lake where they spent long days playacting the battles they had been taught were glorious, the wars they were taught made heroes, the soldiers and generals they were supposed to look up to.

He had to remind himself of the true atrocities. He had to remember the blood, the screams. Dimitri, bathing in it, his grin wild and feral. They were too young, far too young to be thrown into battle, his boots slipping in the gore and viscera. Screaming, shitting, dying soldiers so covered in the filth of the battlefield he didn’t know who was on which side and it hardly mattered. Everyone went into the dirt in the end. This wasn’t glorious, there were no heroes. This was booming loud with cannons and gunfire, this was thrumming with magic, it burned on his arms and in his head, this was messy and grotesque.

He had to remind himself what he had run from. He had run from the glory of that battlefield, he had run from the way Dimitri bathed in the grotesqueries. He had run from the celebrations of soldiers, there was no glory in this.

And still, there was less glory in running away.

At first he had struggled with that. There was no honor in desertion, no glory for the coward who fled the battlefield. But those were just the ideals that had been forced upon him, growing up in the Holy Kingdom of Dying for your King. Just like Glenn had. Just like those soldiers had, faceless and nameless and bleeding out. There had to be a better way.


	8. All my Failings Exposed

No one came for him. No one knocked on the door of Glenn’s room, no one let themselves in. Felix bundled into his sainted big brother’s cloak and curled on the bed. It was everything he remembered. Even the tree whose thin branches swayed in the breeze out the window was just the same, like it hadn’t grown at all. The scratches under the closet door handle from Glenn and Felix trying to teach themselves to pick locks. The training swords, battered and splintered, leaning against the bookshelves. Old legends and treatises on war stacked high and well read. A clumsy statue of an old knight Felix had tried to make one year for Glenn’s birthday. A love note from Ingrid, her messy handwriting and crooked drawn hearts he knew well.

He dreamed of the snowstorms of his childhood. And every step he took painted red in the white snow and dripped sickening, melting, from him to the snow. Leaving tracks. And in his dream he kept walking. Kept dripping the hot, wet blood, melting the ice beneath him, he didn’t know where it came from. From him, of that he was certain, but there were no open wounds. He kept walking.

Towards a figure, back to him, the snow and ice blew his cloak around his strong shoulders, the black finery of his military garb. All around him the dead reached out, grabbing at his thick cloak, pulling him down. All around the figure the dead reached out, held on to him. Pulled him down with them. Down, into the snow, bleeding it so thick as to be black. Down with them until all that was left was the dead.

He woke scared, in the dark, in unfamiliar territory. In his beloved, saintly dead brother’s bedroom. Burrowed under his military formal cloak, the furred collar warm at his skinny shoulders. Still in the clothes he had traveled in. Tattered jeans, old battered boots, a faded shirt. _Love Will Tear Us Apart_ , the shirt said. Fucking right it would.

Dimitri was standing in the doorway, his face a mess of concern, a strip of dark fabric wrapped around his head in place of the fine eyepatches he wore in news stories and photographs that celebrated their glorious war. His shirt was loose, but it showed his strength and his toned, fighter’s body. He stood in the doorway, leaning against the cold stone frame, his eyes were intent on Felix even as he thought Felix was sleeping.

He didn’t want to ask.

So he just sat up, combing his fingers through his hair, groaning. “If you’re going to watch me sleep, at least bring me coffee.”

“I did.” Dimitri stepped into the room, offered him a mug. It was rich, black and bitter, one of the few things he had missed when he left Faerghus. Adrestian coffee wasn’t as heavy. This was like being punched in the face, and Felix loved it.

He took another long drink, stared at Dimitri. “What.”

“Walk with me?”

“Why.”

“I missed you Felix, is that so hard to imagine?”

“Maybe.” Felix bit out. “I want to leave.”

“I know. You said you would stay, and I shouldn’t hold you to that, but I need you to stay.”

“You _need_ to remember that I left for a reason.”

“I wish I knew what that reason was.” Dimitri watched him. Felix hated it, hated the feeling of that one blistering blue eye on him, like the beast saw everything. Like he could see where Felix had been. What Felix had seen.

Instead, Felix drank the rest of the coffee, put the empty mug on the bedside table. “Fine.”

“I postponed my meetings for today, I thought perhaps we could spend the day together.”

“Fine.” Felix repeated. “But I need clean clothes.”

“I- That can be provided. We kept your chambers exactly as you left them.” Dimitri didn’t look at him, then. Like he was somehow ashamed to have kept his rooms. Like Felix was a dead child, Dimitri the grieving parent. Trying to keep something like he would come home.

Felix chose a simple black shirt, black jeans. The same boots he had been wearing, used combat boots Dorothea had bought him from a secondhand store. Said he couldn’t keep wearing the boots he’d been through the trenches in. They’d held a bonfire for his bloodstained clothes, a mockery of a funeral pyre, and it had solidified his friendship with her. And she had never asked him about the war again.

Dimitri was waiting in the hallway. He had something of a military formal outfit, probably what he wore every day. The fineries and medals showing off how they had survived the war. If you could call this surviving. His boots were perfectly polished, and Felix knew the servants had cleaned and shone his clothing for the day, and Dimitri treated that like it was just normal. Normal to have servants who made sure you eat, made sure you dressed, made sure you got out of bed and did your duties and remembered to be a human being. They coddled the beast, primped and primed him to face the world.

He was beautiful. Felix wanted to hate him.


	9. As the Shrike to your Sharp and Glorious Thorn

“Do you want breakfast?” Dimitri asked, offered his hand.

Felix didn’t take it. “I should eat. It’s been a while.”

“Come on, whatever you want. And more coffee.”

He resented how Dimitri pretended this was normal. How he smiled and touched Felix’s shoulder, walked with him, guiding him like Felix hadn’t lived here for so long. Like he hadn’t snuck down to the kitchens in the middle of the night to bring back snacks for Dima and Ingrid and Sylvain. Like he and Dimitri hadn’t mapped all the hidden corridors of the palace. Like he didn’t use the pathway behind Dimitri’s bookcase so many times to sneak into his room, curl up with him in the nights when he couldn’t sleep.

They went to the kitchen, the cook was the same old woman who had been there when Felix was small, she recognized him, and he pretended she didn’t. He took the bowl of hot oatmeal she served, mixed in a little brown sugar and butter, he leaned against the kitchen counter to eat. Didn’t want to go to the formal dining room, too many awkward, silent dinners after Glenn had been killed. Too many empty stares, his father looking at him and seeing his saintly dead brother. Looking at his father and seeing Glenn, his face covered in blood, his eyes hollow and pale. Dimitri remained beside him, watched Felix, even as he ate.

“Where did you go?”

“Why, so you can look for me when I leave?”

“Do you know how hard we looked? We searched every medical tent, every trench every town, we thought you had died, Felix.”

“I may as well have.” He bit out.

“Then why didn’t you come home?”

“Death is better than seeing what you have become.”

“And what have I become?” Dimitri tried to meet his eyes. Felix wouldn’t let him.

“A rabid boar. A beast craving blood. A monster wearing his face.” Felix spat.

Dimitri looked away. “I know what you saw in battle. And I’m sorry.”

Felix didn’t answer. Had nothing to say. This wasn’t his Dimitri. Still, he didn’t push him away. He couldn’t, this was the closest thing he had to the man who had once been his closest friend.

“I remember how much you loved to train with swords.” Dimitri started, “We could, um, we could go to the training grounds. If you like.”

“I’d enjoy beating you again.” Felix quirked a smile. His first, since Dimitri had appeared in front of the news cameras and begged for him to come home.

Dimitri took him outside, to the training grounds Felix had known so well, the well worn grounds under his feet, the dust it had always kicked up. He remembered when the dust had come as tall as he was, though it seemed so insignificant now. The swords, once so proud, shining and tempting and calling out to him, now seemed dull, toy mockeries of the war he had been thrown into too young. Still, he grabbed one, turned it in his hand, took a couple practice swings. Watched Dimitri take one of the wooden training lances.

They used to train together daily. Swords, horseback that Felix had never enjoyed, magic that Dimitri had never taken to. Marksmanship, hand to hand combat, leading battalions. Felix had thrived in it, and he’d followed at Dimitri’s heels, and they had planned to be the greatest leaders in the coming war, the way they would be celebrated as heroes.

He almost missed Dimitri’s attack. Dodged, at the last moment, tried to knock his spear aside. Ducked under his second blow, and retorted with his own, the thrill of the battle beginning to course through him. For all of Dimitri’s brute strength, Felix was fast, he could duck and weave around the long spear, though Dimitri was relentless, and Felix had not fought in so long. He tried to gather his breath, fought back as best he could. Surprised he could still hold his own against the Great Beast of Faerghus. Found ways to fight back. Dimitri left openings, he was aggressive, but he was all force, no thought.

Felix found his opening, drove his shoulder into Dimitri’s gut, knocking him back, and disarmed him, sword to his throat.

“You still don’t think, boar.”

“Don’t I?” He looked down, pointedly.

Felix followed his gaze, only to find a wooden training knife pushed against his belly. And he laughed. “A draw, then?”

“Tiebreaker?” Dimitri suggested, with a crooked smile.

Felix wiped his brow, nodded. “Tiebreaker. First blood?”

“Pin me.”

Felix nodded, once. “Hand to hand then?”

“No, where’s the fun in that? We’d have to disarm our opponent, then pin them.”

“Good. A challenge.” Felix picked his sword up again, shook his shoulders out. Leveled it to Dimitri.

They fought, wild, sweat glistened on Dimitri’s forehead and Felix was distracted by the bright glee in Dimitri’s blue eye, the way it shone. The way he shone. The way the light filtering in made bright marks in his hair, radiance instead of filthy sweat. Felix almost missed his footing, once, twice as they sparred, as their fighting began to take on an audience. The staff of the palace was, for perhaps the first time, seeing the sheer ungodly strength of their king. And seeing him soundly beaten.

Felix forced him back, pushed him until he missed his own footing and splayed back into the dust of the training grounds. Kicked the spear aside and pinned Dimitri, wrists at his sides under Felix’s knees, Felix’s sword at his throat.

“You’re still so predictable.” Felix sneered, watching Dimitri’s single eye for a reaction. His pupil was blown wide, breath hard. Just so, it was a good fight. Felix was sure he looked much the same mess.

But there was something thrilling about having Dimitri underneath him, and Felix stood before he could be forced to consider that further. Before he had to think about the flushed heat pooling in the pit of his stomach. Turned away from Dimitri and grabbed water from the sitting area near the training grounds. Avoided the eyes of the servants and ministers who had stopped to watch them fight.


	10. Like a Cry at the Final Breath that is Drawn

_[***-4210] Prince Dimitri has a guest.  
[***-6711] I know Lady Ingrid and Lord Sylvain are coming later today, another one?  
[***-4210] Someone else. Dark hair. Really, really pretty.  
[***-0405] Anyone we know?  
[***-6711] Dark hair like Duke Fraldarius dark or like that creepy dude with no eyebrows from the Adrestian visitors dark?  
[***-4210] Fucking Goddess Lina for the 800th time he had eyebrows they were just, like, really skinny. And he wasn’t that creepy. Kind of cute, actually.   
[***-4210] And it was more like Duke Fraldarius dark. Come to think of it he looks a little like the Duke. Probably from Fraldarius territory.  
[***-0405] Speaking of creepy no eyebrows I heard a rumor he’s fucking the Prime Minister of Adrestia.  
[***-4210] Yeah they were bumping uglies when they were on that diplomatic tour of Faerghus. Worst kept secret in Adrestia.  
[***-4210] Anyways, I have a sneaking suspicion that dark hair prettyboy is Felix Fraldarius.  
[***-6711] Can I quote you on that? Pics?  
[***-4210] Not about the fucking but yes about Felix Fraldarius. Keep it anon and I don’t have pics but go ahead and put it in a gossip rag or whatever._

Felix cleaned the training sword, put it back on the rack with the other weapons and dusted off his jeans. They were torn at the knees, revealing fresh scrapes and droplets of blood. Jeans were no good for training, but it wasn’t like he had a choice. He hadn’t expected to stay more than a few hours, much less see the inside of the training hall he’d spent so much of his youth in, at Glenn’s heels or Sylvain’s or Dimitri’s, always a step behind. He used to cry when he skinned his knees, so convinced the tiny drip of blood was a sign he had failed, that he would always be this weak, sickly thing. Always a step behind, following his friends. Never beside them.

Never where he wanted to be- Two steps ahead where he could protect them.

Strong enough that Dimitri didn’t have to be this thing, this one eyed beast that looked out with Dimitri’s face, wore his clothes, used his voice. And tore into Felix with that unyielding blue stare.

“Would you like a coffee?” Dimitri offered.

“What, did you add an entire cafe to your castle?”

“You and Ingrid always joked about wanting one.”

It wasn’t quite a cafe, but he had all the amenities to make specialty coffee drinks. Felix drank his coffee chilled, black and strong, looking out over the castle grounds. His familiar old home, the stomping grounds of his childhood. Past this was where Glenn was laid, beside his mother, and soon his father as well.

A good death, in service of king and country. The kind of death they wrote books about, epic poems, songs. The books Ingrid read voraciously, shared with Glenn.

They would have been happy together. But she thought his death was good as well, heroic.

He looked at Dimitri and his heart skipped. His soft smile, the way he seemed to glow with the sunlight, the muscle that had filled out his tall frame. His hands wrapped around his coffee cup, eye unfocused.

He wanted to ask. Couldn’t. The black strip that covered where an eye had once been was just another sign it wasn’t his Dimitri. 

“Sylvain and Ingrid are arriving tomorrow.” Dimitri didn’t look at him. 

So Felix didn’t look back. “Sylvain and Ingrid?”

The _and_ felt loaded, like something else that had happened when he was away, when he ran from the people who had been there for him.

“They’re trying.”

Like that explained anything. They were all trying, just trying, and nothing got solved.

“They’ll want to see you.”

Felix visibly flinched.

He’d never said goodbye to Sylvain. It would have hurt too much. His best friend, the closest thing he had to a brother after Glenn was gone. Once, they had sworn to stay together until they died together.

Felix hadn’t been able to face him when he had realized he had to leave. That he couldn’t be the right hand of this monster.

The monster who was looking at him, concern knitting his noble brow. Played at human emotions.

“You and Sylvain?”

“No. Nothing. He doesn’t, I, no.” Felix sputtered over the words. He figured it would have been an easy mistake to make, with how close he and Sylvain used to be, the way they used to seem to have the same thoughts, the same wants.

He couldn’t lie to himself and say he’d never thought about it. Hadn’t indulged in a tiny adolescent crush. But Sylvain preferred women, and Felix had never told anyone, hardly knew himself, who he preferred. He wanted so rarely, he could often forget about want at all.

And then there was Dimitri, smiling at him.

“What.” Felix demanded, looked away. He couldn’t meet his eyes and he couldn’t look at that smile and he could hardly look above his own old boots.

“Felix?” He sounded so fond, so affectionate. Like his Dimitri, his friend, the only King he would serve. He wished it could still be him.

“Stop it, boar.” He spit.

“Apologies.” Dimitri flinched away. “I shouldn’t have presumed.”

“Don’t presume we are still friends. I am staying until my father is buried, that’s all.”

“Felix.” His name was a breath on Dimitri’s lips, a plea, a tremble, a prayer.

Felix had to pretend he didn’t hear it. Had to pretend his eyes weren’t burning, his lip wasn’t shaking, his hands weren’t balled into fists so tight he could feel the blunt nails digging into his palms.

“I understand. You do not have to spend the day with me, if you do not desire to do so.”

He sounded, of all things, heartbroken. Like he still had a heart, not one he had ripped from the chest of a soldier, not one he had taken from a family that would grieve. 

“You cancelled all your work for this. I won’t make that useless.”

He wanted to see those tiny glimpses of his Dimitri. The little smiles, the way his blue eye would glint when he was happy about something. The way he reached toward Felix, sometimes.


	11. No Comfort in a Waiting Room

Felix would grab Dimitri’s hand just to keep up with his longer stride. He’d grasp his hand and he used to know the little callouses from their training, the tiny scar on the palm of his hand from the time they had tried to climb the apple trees in the orchard. Found himself looking for it, then, as Dimitri put his coffee cup in the wash bin.

There were new scars. New callouses. But that little one, right at the center of his palm, it was still there. Grabbing the wrong part of the branch and the way the little notch on the tree stabbed into his palm, the blood and the fear and the hurt and Felix trying to remember the first few lessons in Faith magic he’d been taught when they realized Felix had a talent for magic. Crying for the healers when it failed.

They had slept in the same bed for a week after that, Felix holding his hand where it had been cut into, and Felix had promised he would always be there to help. To protect him, just the way the Fraldarius family had always done.

“You don’t have to.” Dimitri repeated, wringing his hands, his thumb massaging that tiny scar.

“I should go back to the hospital.”

“I’ll take you.” Dimitri offered.

“And, and I want to say goodbye.” Felix forced out. Now it was too hard to hide the desire to cry. He chewed his lower lip, staggered his breathing, wrapped his arms around himself.

“Of course, of course. I’ll get Dedue to bring the car around.”

“No.” He couldn’t stand anyone else seeing him, not now, not like this. He’d walk to the hospital if it would mean he could be alone.

“Just us, then?”

“I’ll drive. Less likely for you to be in danger.”

That brought a small laugh from Dimitri. “I don’t know, I remember you learning to drive.”

“We can be fast and still be safe.” Felix let himself smile back.

He did let Felix drive, mostly because he had to sit in the back, where things were protected and bulletproof, and Felix discovered all his old music was still in the car. Turned on a loud, raucous punk rock cd he used to love.

“Some things never change.” Dimitri smiled.

“Good music is always good music.” Felix drummed with the song on the steering wheel.

“We kept your guitar.”

“Maybe if I feel like I can, I’ll play again.”

“I’d like that. You were always good at making up songs.”

He was glad Dimitri couldn’t see his expression.

Admittedly, it was easier to get into the hospital when the Crown Prince of Faerghus himself would vouch for Felix’s need to be in the closed off ward where his father was to die. He was kind enough not to reveal who Felix was, only that he needed to be there.

“Do you want to be alone?” Dimitri asked, he brushed his fingers against the back of Felix’s hand.

Felix could have died in that touch, he needed it, so badly. Hadn’t realized how badly he needed to feel Dimitri’s hand just once more.

“No. I’d rather not be.”

But Dimitri remained quiet, standing behind Felix when they stepped into the sterile room, humming with the machines that were supposed to give Rodrigue a kind of dignified death. Like any death could be made better. Like this was a good end, his father, formerly so strong, towering over the people he guarded, who worshipped him as the right hand of the king, this body, now so frail in the hospital bed, sunken.

But awake. No, no, Felix felt himself stilling, felt his heart sink. He wanted to say goodbye to a man who couldn’t speak to him, a man who couldn’t respond, who didn’t even know he was there. He stilled, but Rodrigue had seen him, his eyes softened.

“Glenn. Have you come to guide me to the warrior’s heaven?”

“Father, it’s Felix.”

“You came home?” Rodrigue gasped. He struggled to breathe, but Felix knelt beside the metal hospital bed, let his father take his hand. It was the least he could offer the dying man. And the grounding of the touch kept him from crying. He couldn’t cry in front of Rodrigue, he had always hated it when Felix cried.

“Just to say my goodbyes.”

“You must stay, Felix.” Rodrigue struggled to speak, “You must stay for your king.”

Felix remained silent. He wouldn’t make a promise he couldn’t keep, even to placate a dying man. And he couldn’t stay. This place wasn’t his home anymore, these people were not the children he had grown up among, even the cold air felt hostile.

“Please, Felix. Please. He needs you.” Rodrigue tried to hold his hand, he could barely move. Such a weak, frail creature that his father had become. “Faerghus needs you.”

“Faerghus will survive.” Felix bit out.

“Because you will be there for us.”

Felix didn’t answer. Just held his hand, bit back all the insults he wanted to hurl, all the hatred he had been exposed to, the way he was pushed right back into his role, the thing he had been primed for since he was barely old enough to understand, the right hand of the king. The lion that roared down his arm, that had been inked on him when he was just fifteen. Too young to really know what this all would mean.

Too young to see war.

Too young for what he was told he had to do, had to be. He had to step into Glenn’s place, stand by Dimitri’s side and defend him, guide him. The Fraldarius family were bodyguards and advisors, and that was what he was born to.

Felix hated it.

But he couldn’t just sit there and watch his father die.

He pushed past Dimitri, looked for somewhere he would be alone, away from the guards and the doctors and the staff that tried to keep this farce of life with them. Because Rodrigue wasn’t alive. He was a shadow of himself, a creature tied to tubes and wires and breathing machines. He died a long time ago.

Felix just had to say goodbye.


	12. I just don't want to Die and I don't want to Live

He was in an unused hospital room, the entire ward was closed for one man, one grotesquerie that kept people who might have needed those rooms shoved aside so he could claim these stolen moments of awareness, cling to a fragile existence as long as possible.

And maybe that was noble, if it kept the boar away from the throne. A beast craving violence was hardly an ideal ruler. Felix wanted to point out that the monarchy was untenable at best anyway, their new ruler should be picked by the people, as they were starting to discuss in Adrestia, but a hospital room was hardly the time.

Across the hall, he could hear Rodrigue calling for Glenn. Calling for the son he actually wanted. He heard the nurses muttering amongst themselves, unaware of Felix in the dark room, bundled into himself on the hospital bed. He didn’t listen, the steady beeping of the machines drowned everything else out. He could almost turn off his brain. Almost.

He could almost forget his father in the other room, the man who didn’t want him there, only wanted the good son, the obedient son, the saintly dead son, a good death, in service of his king, a death in a battle that could be seen.

“Someone needs to care for his highness.” He could hear Rodrigue, like he was standing right beside Felix, speaking to him as the strong man who had raised him, not the creature in the other room.

“We have always stood at the right hand of our king.”

“So one day I’ll get to stand with Prince Dimitri?” Felix had asked, so young, bright eyed and naive, everything he now hated.

“Glenn will. But you can still serve the king, you’ll still be important to Prince Dimitri.” Rodrigue had told him, like that was supposed to be something he could aspire to. A place that was to be admired.

“I’m always going to be by his side. Glenn can do something else.” Felix had fought back, petulant. So young, he couldn’t imagine a life without Dimitri. He didn’t know what was going to happen, the beast Dimitri was going to become.

The hospital bed shifted, and strong arms wrapped around Felix, holding him close, affectionately. Warmth surrounded him, the familiar scent of Dimitri, unchanged since they were children. His arms settled around Felix, Dimitri’s breathing was steady, reassuring. And it broke the floodgates and Felix sobbed, for everything he had lost, for the life he could never return to, he sobbed, tears streaming hot down his cheeks, shaking, he was just trying to hold on. Trying to breathe, trying to keep anything, anything at all.

Because he was being offered what he had wanted since he was a tiny child. A life at the side of the first person he had loved, before he even knew what love was. The life he had been told he was born for, supporting Dimitri, advising him, helping him.

He’d wanted that so badly as a child. He’d never wanted to leave Dimitri’s side. Cried, screamed when he had to go away to the summer palace, or Fraldarius territory north of Fhirdiad. Once, he’d hidden in Dimitri’s wardrobe, hoped they would leave without him. He could stay.

Dimitri held him, let him cry. There were no words, just his steady breathing. His huge hand on Felix’s arm, thumb rubbing against his hand. Steadying him. Waiting for Felix to start breathing.

“Felix,” Dimitri started, long, shuddering breaths.

Felix knew.

“Felix he’s, um. He’s gone.”

All he could do was nod, hollow. He didn’t have to stay, after this. He could leave the hospital and be gone. He’d fulfilled his duties to his father. To Dimitri. He didn’t have to stay.

“I can get you a flight anywhere in Fodlan. You can leave again, if you want.”

“But?” Felix could feel everything they didn’t say.

“We’re going to lay him to rest in the palace cemetery. With Glenn and your mother. And I’ll have to assume the duties of king, there’s no one left to be King Regent in my place.”

Felix didn’t respond. He couldn’t respond. He knew what Dimitri was leading to but he needed that silence back. Those arms around him, the steadiness of him, the warmth and weight and soothing repetition of his heartbeat thump thump thumping against Felix’s back. He needed that, not Dimitri trying to fill the aching silence. Even the machines had stopped.

Rodrigue was gone, and there was this silence stretching out forever. And he lay there, in the darkness, desperately hoping Dimitri wouldn’t let go.

“Take your time. You don’t need to decide right away.”

Felix felt the tears welling up again, threatening to break, to spill over. “You need to make the announcement.”

“It can wait. You need to not be alone right now.”

“I can live with it. Go do your duty.”

“Duty can wait a few minutes for me to comfort my closest friend.”

Felix bit out a tearful, bitter laugh. “I left you for years and I’m still your closest friend?”

“I hoped- I prayed every day you would come home. But the war, it did things to us. Took things from us. And I wasn’t me. I wasn’t worthy of you, or of my father’s crown, or of the praise the people wanted to give me.”

“They’ll want to crown you today.”

“Tomorrow. That’s why Ingrid and Sylvain are coming.”

“You want me to be there.” Felix whispered.

“I won’t make you.”

“Until he’s buried. Once he’s with Glenn and Mother I’m gone.”

“Anything you need.”

Felix turned, pressed his face against Dimitri. The solid weight of him, the strength of him. Despite everything, the boar was beautiful, and his arms around Felix’s smaller frame was soothing. And the tears he kept fighting fell again, hot and shameful down his face. But there was no judgement from Dimitri, no words. A hand rubbed his back, little circles against his shoulder blades, he didn’t mention that he could feel every notch in Felix’s spine, but he knew Dimitri did. He didn’t mention the hot, wet tears that stained Dimitri’s shirt, and Felix didn’t mention Dimitri’s tears against his head, where Dimitri tucked against him.

He cried himself to sleep, burrowed into Dimitri.


	13. Like Brothers on a Hotel Bed

_**Fhirdiad Daily News** _

_In Memory- Duke Rodrigue Fraldarius, King Regent_

_Late in the afternoon of the seventh day of the Pegasus Moon, Faerghus lost a strong ruler, a good man, Duke Rodrigue Fraldarius, who, for nine years served as King Regent, guiding Prince Dimitri Blaiddyd through the war against the Adrestian Empire and the aftermath that we still suffer through to this day. But without the Duke, would would have almost certainly lost more.  
Yet still we lost the Duke Fraldarius. He is survived by the Prince Dimitri, who he took in after King Lambert’s untimely death, and his missing son, Lord Felix Hugo Fraldarius. Dates for the public memorial service will be announced._

_Please see our front page story in memoriam of the late Duke Fraldarius._

Felix supposed one of the benefits to being king was that no one judged you for sleeping in a hospital bed, and, by proxy, no one would judge the skinny wreck of a farce of a human that woke up, sore and hollow, in your arms.

His head hurt. And getting out from Dimitri’s grasp would wake him, and then there would be the conversation. But the nurses had probably all texted their friends, who had texted their friends, and everyone in the country would know about the man who had cried too hard in an empty hospital room while someone died, and the fact that the Crown Prince had dropped everything to comfort him.

Just like when they were kids.

But they weren’t anymore. And they couldn’t pretend to be. He shuffled, shifted until Dimitri rolled over in his sleep, groaning. Such a human movement from the beast. Felix tied his own hair back again, tried to adjust the sleep rumpled clothes. Look like he wasn’t a disaster. He stood there, in the tiny en suite bathroom, under the harsh lights, staring at his hollowed out eyes. His sparse frame, he had always been skinny, but now he looked like there was nothing there. Nothing but bone under his sweater, collarbones jutting out pale from under the too extravagant black fabric. He could sell off a sweater this nice in Adrestia and feed Dorothea and the others for a week. It wasn’t right.

He could help. He could fill a bag with all the niceties he had taken for granted and bring them back. Help the people who actually needed it. He had to do something. Anything. No one would miss them. They would learn not to miss him. Learn to stop looking, learn he didn’t want to be found.

Learn not to stage grandiose press conferences to beg for him to come back. He said goodbye. He would see his father buried. He’d done what he had to do. He could leave. Even now, with Dimitri asleep, he could leave. Disappear all over again. They didn’t know where he had gone. Steal clothes, jewels, finery, they were all his anyway, and bring them back. Like Dorothea had said. They could find somewhere to live, somewhere real, not squatting in the opera house anymore. He could take the good guitar from his old room, write songs for Dorothea, maybe she could find something to do with them. Much more than he ever had, making up stupid songs to sing with his friends, teasing them, playing covers of the songs he had loved. Dorothea had real talent, they could make something.

He could be around people who were his friend because of who he was, not who he had been. Who got to know him with no familial expectations, no titles, no land. No long and sordid history going back to the time of Kyphon and Loog, the first kings, the Elites and their sacred weapons.

He could leave all of that behind to be around people who liked him. Not his name or his title or his history or his dead hero father or sainted brother.

Felix splashed cold water on his face, tried to solidify his plans in his head. What he wanted to take, what he could fit into his bag and get all the way across the border again. Dimitri would probably be so kind as to try and help him some, maybe even get him passage as far as the border, and Felix wasn’t above taking advantage of the beast’s fondness for him.

No. That fondness, that felt real. The way he held him, comforted him. Kept his things like a mausoleum for him. His hand, it kept reaching for him. He cancelled all his meetings. Did everything he could to make Felix feel wanted. Welcomed.

“Felix?” Sylvain looked like he had seen a ghost. And perhaps he had.

**Author's Note:**

> @addytepes on twitter


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